Demons
by Vaetra
Summary: Each has their own demons, but who would have thought such things could be shared? Complete! With a bit of Sweenett.
1. Chapter 1

Well, I wrote another one… I started out with one thing in mind, and then sort of changed halfway through, so if it seems rather disjointed, that's probably why. It's also not quite as Sweenett-heavy as "Rainwater" but if I continue it, it may get a bit more so.

It was very still, and that was perhaps the thing that disturbed Mrs Lovett most about that night. The silence filled her dark room to the brim and rang horribly in her ears. She was afraid to move for fear that the rustling her bed sheets would make as she shifted might offend the silence, anger it, turn it against her. She was afraid to close her eyes, knowing that when she did, the faces of Mr Todd's victims would once again appear in her mind to haunt her, staring at her with dead eyes, blood dripping from the corners of their mouths. She knew that she would see again their limp bodies, unable to protest as she bent to her gruesome task, slitting open their skin, gutting them, cutting their flesh into pieces and throwing aside the bones.

No, Mrs Lovett knew she couldn't close her eyes. So she stared at the ceiling, her head full of demons, trying to ignore the taste of blood in her mouth. Suddenly she sat bolt upright in bed, her previous fear of silence forgotten. The door! The door, she had forgotten to shut the bake house door! Panic rose in Mrs Lovett's throat. They would come for her. All those dead men whose corpses she had butchered. They would come for her, dripping blood as they lurched up the stairs, and she would be powerless against them.

Mrs Lovett scrambled quickly out of bed, smoothing the skirts of the dress she hadn't bothered to take off when she had retired that evening. She had to go. Now. She had to close that door before it was too late. Before they came for her. She stumbled to the door, wincing at every creak her stockinged feet extracted from the old floorboards. The doorknob clicked agonizingly when she turned it and stepped out into the hallway. With no moonlight to stream through the wide windows in the front of the shop, it was pitch black, but Mrs Lovett didn't dare light a lamp.

She widened her eyes uselessly against the thick darkness and, with one hand trailing against the wall for support, tottered like a blind woman to where she knew the top of the stairs to the bake house would be. Her hand was unsteady on the wall, now that she was once again nearing that place which caused her so much terror, and that, ironically, was also the the place in which she spent so much time. It was with a somewhat shaky resolve that Mrs Lovett forced herself down the rickety stairs. She held one hand out in front of her, groping about in the blackness, and gasped when it came into contact with rough wooden planks.

Using her other hand to explore the strange surface, Mrs Lovett felt across the boards until suddenly, with a sigh that escaped her lips like mad laughter, she realized that the thing in front of her was really the very bake house door that she had been convinced she had forgotten to shut. Silently cursing her own paranoia, the baker made sure the heavy iron bolt was securely in place and then made her weary way back up the stairs.

She was about to move back down the hall to her room when something made her stop. The faint whisper of breath in the dark, in and out, made her go cold. She froze, her palm still pressed against the wall for support. There was a tapping noise, growing closer. Footsteps. Images of demons were flashing through Mrs Lovett's terrified brain, their slashed throats dripping, their arms encircling her, pulling her down to their hungry, fanged mouths.

In the oppressive blackness, every sound was magnified, the approaching footsteps crashing onto the floorboards, Mrs Lovett's own heartbeat echoing thunderously in her ears. Slim fingers circled her wrist and she closed her eyes, waiting for the demon to strike.

"Mrs Lovett?" The sound of her own name startled the baker, but the voice that said it startled her even more. Mr Todd. What was he doing here? For a moment she was relieved, but then it occurred to her that perhaps she should still be worried. While one hand gripped her arm, what if the other was curled around one of his beautiful silver razors? She tried to pull away, but his fingers tightened on her wrist. "Wait."

Something in his voice made her obey. Mr Todd stepped closer, so near now that Mrs Lovett thought she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face.

"What are you doing here?" His voice was its characteristic monotone- neither hostile nor friendly. She couldn't tell if this was normal, or if there was bloodlust bubbling just below the surface.

She answered slowly "…I couldn't sleep."

A low breath, almost a sigh passed his lips and his once-painful grip on her arm loosened slightly. "Oh." Mrs Lovett too breathed a sigh of relief and let herself experience the quiet joy of standing so close to the surly object of her affection. She breathed in his scent- metal, and the Eau de Cologne he kept in glass bottles on the bureau in his shop.

Plucking up her courage, she gazed at where she imagined his face might be in the dark and said, "I had… horrible dreams. D'you ever get those, Mr T? Demons in your head?"

There was a long pause, and Mrs Lovett wished she could see the barber's expression. Finally, "Yes," he whispered. "Yes, I do." Then his hand left her arm, and she heard his footsteps receding back upstairs.


	2. Chapter 2

_Well, I decided to continue this. I've never written from Sweeney's pov before, so bear with me. There will be Sweenett in the next one, I promise!_

Sweeney Todd didn't sleep the rest of that night. He didn't even try, as he sometimes did, leaning back in his diabolical barber's chair and trying to force his churning thoughts to calm long enough for him to get some rest. But neither did he pace up and down his room, as he usually did when sleep refused to come. No, tonight the barber stood by his window, frowning out on the streets of a darkened London, turning the night's events over in his mind, most specifically what his disturbingly perceptive landlady had said to him.

_Demons in his head._ Mr Todd's hands tightened on the windowsill. How could she have guessed that all he saw now when he closed his eyes were demons: the judge standing smirking at him, always just out of Sweeney's reach; Johanna, her pale face streaked with dirt and tears, huddled behind the barred windows of a mad house; Lucy, though it was never the Lucy he had known, not quite. Her face was haggard, and her eyes held something he didn't recognize, and her throat was slick with blood, slashed, he knew, by one of his own razors.

He couldn't sleep anymore for fear that he would see them, all wanting from him a different thing that he could not give. And with a simple question, Mrs Lovett had cut straight to the heart of all his pain, voiced what he could not. Why would she ask him such a thing? Sweeney bowed his head, still leaning on the windowsill. What did she know about his nightmares?

The next day, Sweeney tried to avoid the baker, refusing to come down from his shop, and not meeting her eyes when she brought him his food on a tray. He couldn't say _why_ he didn't want to look at her, except that he was half afraid that she might say something, do something that would remind him again of his nighttime visions, that a flick of her dark eyes would go straight through him, brushing a part of him even he didn't fully understand. A vulnerable part.

But no matter how hard Mr Todd tried to push her away, somehow Mrs Lovett kept on finding her way into his troubled head. It distracted him.

As he was carefully lathering the face of his next customer, Mr Todd began thinking about their brief conversation the night before. _She said she had demons too…_ He wished he could have seen her face as she said that. Whatever emotion her dark eyes had held then, he was sure they must have been full to the brim.

Just then, blood spattered into his eyes, blinding him and effectively cutting off his train of thought. As he'd been pondering the woman downstairs, his hand had slipped as he drew his razor across the unfortunate customer's throat, sending a spray of blood up into Sweeney's face. Cursing his own wandering mind, the barber pressed the pedal next to his chair, sending the still-choking man smashing onto the bake house floor below, and wiped his face with the white cloth he kept tucked in his belt.

Looking out of the window, he saw that it was dark, and a half-moon was already high in the sky. As he cleaned his razor, Mr Todd idly wondered if Mrs Lovett was asleep yet, if she was dreaming.. He caught himself with a snarl. Placing his beautiful silver friend back in its box, not caring that there was still blood on his sleeves and in his hair, Sweeney went to the door and opened it roughly. That was it. He had to put a stop to this.


	3. Chapter 3

So, this is the last chapter, which turned out to be pretty long. The ending's a little fluffy, but all in all, I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. Thanks to andaere for reviewing.

Mrs Lovett was still awake, kneading dough for tomorrow's pies when she heard the bell on the shop door jangle. She looked up, about to explain to whomever it was that they were closed now, and to come back in the morning, but the reprimand died in her throat when she saw that it wasn't a misguided customer who had entered her shop. Mr Todd, his eyes dully glittering in the moonlight, stepped into the shop and shut the door behind him. Blood was drying on his sleeves, and flecks of it were visible in the white shock of his hair.

Mrs Lovett stepped away from the counter. Something in his expression made her nervous. She gestured with a floury hand to his blood shirt. "Need me to wash that for you, Mr T?"

"No." He poured himself a glass of gin from a bottle on the shelf.

Mrs Lovett frowned. "Did you come here for a pie, then?"

"No." He sat down at the table by the window.

The woman put her hands on her hips. "Well what do you want then, love?"

There she went again. Asking simple questions that still managed to cut him as deeply as any razor. A humourless smile twisted his mouth. "I wish I knew," he whispered.

"What's that now?"

Sweeney's eyes snapped back to the face of Mrs Lovett, his brief moment of self-contemplation behind him now. "Demons, Mrs Lovett." His eyes bored into her with such single-minded intensity that the baker couldn't help the prickle of fear she felt on the back of her neck.

"S-sorry?"

He stood again, too agitated to remain in his chair. "Nightmares. Last night, you told me you had demons in your head… You asked me if I had them too."

She brushed a strand of hair away from her face, too distracted by his burning eyes to fully listen to what he was saying. "Did I? I don't"-

What little self-control the barber had been holding together fell apart then. He crossed the room in two swift strides, and with one hand, pinned Mrs Lovett against the wall by her white throat. Mr Todd's breathing was as laboured as if _he_ was the one being strangled, and his words came grouped between heavy gasps. "How… do you know… what I dream of? What do… you know… about _demons_?" He spoke the last word as a curse.

She tried to reply, but all her crushed windpipe could emit was a pitiful rasp. Her pulse was going like mad against Sweeney's hand, and at that moment, he wondered if he might slit her throat. The thought of seeing her blood pooling on the floor made him smile, and he reached for the razor at his hip, never looking away from her terrified brown eyes, which were quickly going dull from lack of oxygen. But suddenly, her eyes weren't brown anymore. They were blue. Her tangled dark hair was yellow, falling in smooth curls around her pale face. _Lucy!_

With a cry, Mr Todd fell back, staring at his own traitorous hands, horrified at what they had almost done. _Lucy…_ But when he looked up again, all he saw was Mrs Lovett, her chest heaving, still pressed against the wall, afraid to move. He collapsed back into the chair, shaking, bringing up his hands to cover his face. _He had been so sure it was Lucy…_

As her tenant fell back into his chair, Mrs Lovett let out a shaky breath, relaxing against the wall. But then, as he buried his head in his hands, her eyes swam with sudden tears of pity for the man whose fingers had been clamped around her neck mere seconds ago. She knew she shouldn't feel sympathy for him, but it was impossible for her to look on him, her Mr Todd, without her heart melting.

Slowly, she approached him. He let her draw his hands away from his face. They were as dry as paper. "Mr T, love," she whispered gently, "what's wrong?"

"I keep seeing them," he muttered. He didn't meet her eyes, and she wondered if he had even heard her question, or if he had already forgotten her and was just talking to herself. "The judge, Johanna, my Lucy… they visit me… every night and I… I can't sleep. I can't close my eyes." He lapsed into silence, his eyes still burning a hole in the wall.

Mrs Lovett sighed, knowing that she no longer existed to him. Mr Todd might have been alone in the room for all he was concerned. But, for some reason, his silence invited her to speak, to tell him all of _her_ nightmares too, though she knew he wasn't listening.

So she opened mouth, and she poke. She spoke about her nightmares, how the faces of the dead haunted her, wouldn't leave her alone. She spoke of the horror of butchering another human being, of how she thought that rivers of blood were running through the streets of London, and nothing she could do would stem the flow, of how she was so tired, and now all she wanted to do was sleep. But she couldn't She couldn't sleep anymore.

All the time, Sweeney's dark eyes remained steady on the wall. Mrs Lovett stared unabashedly at him, his profile rimmed in white moonlight, his eyes black pools she could fall into. The sight of him made fire bloom in her chest, while the rest of her went cold. Her voice, previously on the verge of hysteric as she had poured her heart out to deaf ears, was quiet now as she continued. "But I'll keep going." She couldn't look at him now, so she stared at the floorboards under her feet. "I'll keep going for you, Mr T. I… I'll do anything for you."

For the longest time there was silence, and Mrs Lovett's faint hope that maybe he really had been listening was gone. Then, "I'm sorry, Mrs Lovett."

The baker breathed in until she thought her lungs would burst. When she looked up h e was still staring at the wall. Perhaps she had imagined it. "What?" All the breath left her body on that word, and it sounded more like a sigh than a question.

"I'm sorry, Mrs Lovett." Though no hint of emotion flitted across Mr Todd's face, Mrs Lovett's heart soared. It was as though he'd said he loved her. Before she could think better of it, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to her beloved barber's. He didn't pull away, but nor did he kiss her back. He just sat there numbly and let it happen. Mrs Lovett was about to draw back, cheeks flushed with embarrassment at this rejection, when suddenly, the pressure on her mouth was returned with such passion that she was caught off-guard, nearly falling backward off her chair. But Mr Todd caught her and pulled her back up to him. His mouth firmly against hers, her mind swirling with impossible joy, Mrs Lovett found herself in the arms of a demon, but somehow, she didn't find it so bad.

The End.


End file.
